


easier said than done (breaking away from you)

by weasleyspotter



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Hydra Grant Ward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2015-01-20
Packaged: 2018-03-08 07:52:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3201371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weasleyspotter/pseuds/weasleyspotter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first thing Jemma does when she leaves the Bus, is buy a car.</p>
            </blockquote>





	easier said than done (breaking away from you)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Ward x Simmons winter hiatus event, week #3: Roadtrip AU. 
> 
> Gosh darn it, I never thought I'd write a fic like this, but it just wouldn't get out of my head. I know it's short, but writing this was so hard for some reason. I'm just glad I finished it.

i.

The Bus drops her off in the edge of some rural town in Pennsylvania.

Fitz is in a coma, Skye’s mad at her, May is off somewhere doing something that is much too classified for Jemma to know about. So Coulson is the one to see her off. He’s got a grim look on his face and a set way in his shoulders that tells her clearly, he’s not pleased with the way she’s handling things.

(He shouldn’t blame her, really. There’s no manual for _my husband turned out to be a traitorous bastard, now what do I do_.)

All she knows is she can’t stay on the Bus. She can’t sleep knowing that Ward is a few feet away from her. She can’t stay by Fitz’s beside, because all that keeps ringing in her head is his last words to her. She can’t meet Skye’s eyes, because all that she sees is betrayal.

“Where are you going to go?” Coulson asks finally. He’s already said the necessary things. He’s reminded her that she’d always have a place with Shield. They could find somewhere else for Ward (that was a bold faced lie, Ward is too valuable to keep anywhere else).

She smiles at him, a fake brittle smile, but a smile nonetheless. “I have no idea.”

ii.

She has some idea, of course.

Having a paranoid schizophrenic for a husband pays off when you want to run away, because he has stashes of secret identities across the world. And when they got married, he built up identities for her as well. At the time, she had listened to his little ‘if the world should ever come to an end’ monologues with a hint of patronization. But now, she looks back on it ruefully.

He’s got a stash in a Bus locker nearby, and she thumbs the key nervously as she approaches the locker. She barely stops to analyze what’s in the bag. She just grabs it and runs.

Outside the bus depot, she stops on a bench, hidden behind an overgrown bush, and sorts through the stuff. There are a few identity packages, filled with all the important documents. There are fat stacks of cash, more than enough to last her for a year.

She slings the bag across her chest and moves on.

It doesn’t take her long to find a college boy selling his old car to make some quick cash. The fat pile of cash she places in front of him mesmerizes him. Probably way more than he was asking for. And in return, he doesn’t ask any questions when she asks for the keys.

She gets behind the wheel and starts driving. She doesn’t know where she’s going. But she’s finally going somewhere.

iii.

On the first night, she drives and drives until she can’t keep her eyes open any longer. She pulls over at some quaint bed and breakfast and rings on the doorbell.

The owner of the place, a bleary eyed woman in a nightgown, looks a bit bemused as she ushers Jemma through the front door.

“Name, dear?” The woman asks as she flips the registration book open.

“Linda,” she says quickly, picking the first name that popped into her head. She’s ready to reach into the bag and pull out Linda Meyer’s identity packet, but the woman doesn’t ask for any identification.

The woman hands her a key and totters off directions before making her way back down a darkened hall. “Breakfast starts at 8, sweetheart,” she shouts over her shoulder. “Sleep tight.”

iv.

She doesn’t get much sleep.

She’s hundreds of miles away from Ward. She can finally breathe, the knot in her shoulders relaxes, but she can’t sleep. Every time she closes her eyes, his face comes into vision, preserved behind her eyelids like a photograph.

(She saw him once before they shuffled his limp body into Vault D. His eyes filled with anger and betrayal. As if she had done something wrong.)

She spends most of the night planning. There are five identities for her to use. She wants to toss out the ones for him, because they turn her stomach, but she can’t. Not here at least.

In the morning, there’s two sleepy travelers at the table and the woman who owns the place is bright-eyed and handing out steaming plates of eggs, bacon and pancakes. She’s more curious and her questions are directed at Jemma.

She only manages a couple bites before she’s placing a few bills in the old woman’s hand and running out the door.

v.

She spends weeks in motels, driving during the day and sleeping in the shadiest place she can find at night. Most people don’t bother asking for IDs when she waves cash in their faces. And after a few weeks of this, she’s running low.

She makes her first stop in a small town in a little town in Indiana. She checks in a hostel, makes up a story about how she’s driving through the area on her way home and she’s short on some cash. The owner of a diner in the town takes pity on her and offers her a job as a waitress until she has enough money to get back on the road.

It’s the closest she feels to normal in a long time.

But she still can’t sleep at night.

vi.

She begins to separate Grant from Ward.

Ward is the man who betrayed her. Who tricked her into believing he was a good guy. Who would have followed Garrett into Hell, but followed him into Hydra instead. Ward was the man who watched as she tumbled out of the plane in a metal container with her best friend and claimed it was to save her.

But Grant? Grant is the man she loved. The man who jumped out of the plane to save her, the man who spent weeks afterwards ignoring frat regs because she couldn’t sleep unless his arms were around her. Grant is the man whose touch she craves, the man who she sobs for when she breaks through the nightmares, because she misses him so badly.

Grant is the man she thinks of every time someone smiles at her because she misses his stupid half smile like an ache in her stomach.

Grant is the one that keeps her from looking back, because she still loves him.

But she hates Ward.

vii.

Jackson Hole is the first place she wants to settle down in.

It’s a small town with a small school and an opening for a science teacher. They’re small enough that they fawn over her (Jamie Anderson, actually) masters degree in biology. They don’t ask too many questions and practically beg her to stay and teach.

She loves the work. She loves her students, grading papers, settling down. She wants to stay so badly.

(For the first time since she left Shield, she feels like she has a purpose, a goal, something to live for.)

But every time she considers the idea, she can’t help but feel like she’s being watched. Like someone out there is waiting for her to settle down. To stop somewhere. To strike.

She imagines Ward. What he could do to her, to her students, if he ever found her there. That thought is enough to shake her.

She leaves.

viii.

She receives an email twenty miles out of Jackson Hole.

She’s been waiting for it.

In Vault D, Ward is secure. But Shield is bound to screw up at some point, and Ward would be waiting for that moment.

Skye sends her an email, a warning that Ward had broken free. The email urges her to come back to Shield, as if Ward was going to come looking for her first.

(Of course she can’t be sure, but the last time she saw, before he was captured, he tried to kill her.)

She pulls over to the side of the road and thinks. Ward could come looking for her, of course. It was unlikely. He’d have bigger targets, like Hydra and Christian. But she practically set herself up for him by leaving Shield.

Either she could keep running, or she could do something.

She could be the bait.

ix.

She sets herself up in a little cottage in the middle of the woods.

She purchases it with her name and leaves a paper trail so obvious that she could have placed a neon sign outside pointing to the cottage saying _Jemma lives here_ , instead.

She cuts ties with all her alias. She can only hope that Grant comes looking for her first. She’s banking on him being short for time. She’s gambling, but she’s short for time too, and she can’t stop to look in on everyone she’s run into.

(She buys a gun.)

She doesn’t have to wait long for him to show up. He does eventually, and it surprises her a bit.

He’s smiling at her. A wide shit eating grin that sends shivers up her spine. He’s holding his older brother by his collar.

(He’s not Grant anymore. He’s become Ward completely.)

“Hello honey, miss me?”

**Author's Note:**

> The ending is ambiguous for a reason. But if you ask me what happens, Jemma used the gun. But that's just what I think. 
> 
> Please comment and kudos if you enjoyed.


End file.
